We must be on our guard more than ever against the devil's wiles. I reckon he's having a field day right now; here are ten reasons why. As I was writing this, I was convicted of many of my own failings and they are the basis for what I have written here, along with common themes taken from the Bible and illustrated in life generally; some are more specific to experiences over this year. I can't pretend to do justice to Lewis' superlative writings but here is my own interpretation of a demon writing about his experiences of Covid-19.
My dears, I write to you in the midst of a most unexpected yet welcome series of victories for Our Father Below. Long have we waged our war with the Enemy and long we have suffered many defeats as his Church has only grown larger and stronger - with some advances in the wealthier, Western states who have happily become more spiritually dull the more comfortable their circumstances. Yet the past months have yielded more fruit than we could have imagined.
1) The first, and most apparent, reason for our rejoicing in these past months is the physical separation of believers. We have always known that fellowship amongst Christians is one of the most deadly weapons our Enemy wields against us, and persuading our patients to cease meeting together is undoubtedly a tried and tested strategy. Now our endeavours in this area are rendered unnecessary, due to this most efficacious pandemic. Christians are having to remain separated in their dwellings and communicate only via a most unsatisfactory tool known as Zoom. Of course, this is most satisfactory to us. It has never been so simple to convince a Christian to give up meeting with the church. A simple ping on the smartphone or a feeling that they're tired and "Zoomed out" and most of them are taken care of. Nevertheless, our victory is not yet guaranteed as, most disconcertingly, some Christians have taken it upon themselves to increase their efforts of so-called love towards one another all the more due to the restrictions they face! Many demons are reporting that their patients are using text, phone calls, and even the outdated postal service to encourage one another all the more. I cannot express fervently enough that this must be stopped as some Christians are reporting a resulting even greater sense of "love and fellowship" which illustrates perfectly their delusional tendencies. We must do whatever it takes to distract and discourage them from these efforts.
2) We have consequently achieved considerable progress in another essential area: division. Division is the goal of any demon worth his (or her, of course!) salt, as it strikes at the very core of what the Enemy loves. Most pleasingly, this division has been brought about not just because of the physical separation that has so delighted us, but because the Christians are actually arguing among themselves about the virus! We could never have expected such thrilling results, being unfortunately familiar with the incessant chatter amongst the churches about their "unity in Christ", but it transpires that this was quite simply a veil of hypocrisy almost worthy of Our Father himself. All their bluster about having things in common and agreeing on the doctrines of primary importance has wafted away like a mist in the face of discussions over government policies such as masks! We could never have anticipated, never dared hope, for such a victory, given the transience and insignificance of such trivialities in comparison to eternal realities, but it seems the church has swiftly forgotten this, to our great enjoyment. Now, to ensure this division remains healthy, we must commit all our energies to making sure our patients, at no point, actually talk to each other about their disagreements. The longer they fester on their own, building up silent resentment towards their fellow believers, the better! Any open discussion strikes a blow to our campaign. If they insist on talking to each other about these things, try and stir up as much anger and bitterness in them as possible, so that their communications descend into argument, creating more of the delicious division Our Father Below desires.
3) A rather obvious, but no less significant, cause for rejoicing, is the anger that so many Christians are exhibiting. Anger has long been one of the sharpest tools at our disposal due to its overwhelming tendency to drive out love, hope and faith. This global pandemic has provided ample opportunity to inspire anger in our patients. One certainly cannot complain of creative scope in this area: I myself have successfully goaded some of my patients to anger over the following: lockdown restrictions, schools shutting, churches being unable to meet, the government ineptitude on display (it's almost as if Our Father has recruited many of these politicians to our side!), queues at the shops, and of course our most beloved new fiery dart, social media! And make no mistake, Christians are populating both ends of this spectrum really quite effectively - take one seemingly insignificant example which seems to really fire them up: mask-wearing. Some of our patients refuse to wear a mask, and some are so fixated on the importance of mask-wearing that they hate their fellow Christians in their hearts. This is truly a doubled-edged sword, as even the subjects who are not angry about these things are now feeling wrathful towards their fellow believers because of their reactions - sweet irony! Oh, this is fertile ground indeed, and we must sow richly. The true beauty of anger is that it turns them inwards into themselves and away from the Enemy and other Christians, which is the crux of our mission.
4) Following on from anger, then, is selfishness: another worthy goal. The physical separation of believers necessarily leads to forgetfulness and a lack of consciousness of the needs of each other (unless they are really Christlike), and then the divisions and anger marry beautifully to really cultivate self-centredness in our patients. The more introspective they are, the less they care about each other, and the weaker the Church becomes. I have found that some of my patients have fallen into a most pleasing rut of overthinking, so that they become so anxious and paranoid about how others perceive them that their focus has shifted entirely from the man they call Christ to their own wretched hearts. Make every effort to keep them from thinking of each other, as that will only serve to repair the unity that has been so effectively destroyed thus far.
5) We have always known that Christians have been most naively and laughably blasé about the spiritual battle they are in. Some of them fail to give any credit at all to the strength of the our opposition and of the supremacy of Our Father Below, being idiotically fixated on the material and physical so they fall into our traps with little effort on our part. Now this has been turned to our advantage to an even greater extent, if you can credit that! Our patients, in their anger and outrage, have actually confused the spiritual warfare we are in with warfare against their governments. They have stopped fighting against our schemes and have chosen instead to invest all their emotions, their intellect and their spirits in a battle against earthly (yes, earthly!) men. Not for many years have we been the recipients of such opportunity for victory! Of course, regretfully there is still a not insignificant minority that doggedly battle on, thinking the Enemy is on the winning side (to think! - a dead man on a cross, the winner!), and some of our most senior demons assigned to them are most decidedly put out by their faithfulness. Nonetheless, these are the minority, thorn in our side though they may be.
6) Two of the Enemy's most potent assets, prayer and Bible reading, have been significantly weakened by this pandemic - and this was a benefit I had not the foresight to anticipate. I was, I admit, experiencing some degree of foreboding that the extra time many of our patients have had due to Covid would have resulted in vastly more time spent in prayer and Bible reading. But praise Our Father Below, this is not the case! In fact, due to their routines being disrupted and all the trappings of normality falling away, many Christians have been praying and studying the "Word" for a mere fraction of the already paltry time they spent on it before. We have long been working for a breakthrough in this area and I am overjoyed to report that our expectations have been surpassed. We must continue to build on this good work by: encouraging our patients to stay up late so they are too tired to get up and pray in the morning; distracting them with all the usual technology when they do get up; and throwing all kinds of abnormalities their way so that they find it impossible to create a habit of those two deplorable activities.
7) I almost shudder to pen this word: marriage. It is hated by all demons and rightly so, for the strength of a Christian marriage has posed a seemingly insurmountable hurdle for our kind for centuries. Although, much to our revulsion, Christian marriages have weathered the Coronavirus storm surprisingly well on the whole, there are still a pleasing minority which have been greatly affected. We delight in this and anticipate the pressures of ongoing restrictions causing irreparable damage to the marriages of believers: whether this by via financial pressure, disagreements, time constraints, the difficulties of parenting or spiritual and mental illness - it matters not, so long as we attain the prize of marital breakdown.
8) Equally malevolent to me is the subject of the pastors. To be the stumbling block that causes a pastor to fall has long been a trophy achievement for a demon, as the repercussions of this are so widely felt and deeply affecting that really they do their own work for us. But Covid has provided us with another string to our bow here - that of distraction! Church leaders have had to spend vast amounts of time trying to familiarise themselves with baffling technology (such as this most pleasing Zoom interface), and acquaint themselves with the ever-changing and prolific regulations from governments. This perfect storm is much welcomed by all demons as it has meant the very useful and timely distraction for pastors from their congregations and their spiritual needs, leaving them as sitting ducks for us. An added bonus of this is that Church members can then become resentful and bitter, responses we so cherish. Unfortunately, their efforts have largely succeeded greatly, with many demons reporting that their patients are actually enjoying and benefiting from these ridiculous online events, but we soldier on.
9) The children. For millennia we have understood, as the Enemy does, the importance of winning humans over to our side while they are still young. Most frustratingly, the church often provided an enticing environment of this so-called love and "belonging" to the sons and daughters of our patients, meaning they were often indoctrinated and lost to our cause. An enormous encouragement during this pandemic has been the difficulty children have in experiencing any sense of belonging to their church, courtesy of the impersonal nature of Zoom and the lack of any physical gathering. Some parents are endeavouring to teach their children at home, of course, but many demons have implemented the usual devices (such as arguments at family mealtimes when many patients will attempt to read and pray with their young) to great effect. Even better if the divisions and anger I touched on above can be displayed by the adults in front of their children to visibly demonstrate the cursed hypocrisy that destroys young faith.
10) Last but not least, my dears, is that age-old, precious commodity that has been such a thrill to us: human arrogance. From the first days when Our Father Below coaxed the arrogance of Eve to fruition and brought about the Happy Event, human pride has been at the centre of our battle-plan. All I have expressed until now is reliant on the tendency of Christians to arrogance. Divisions, disagreements, anger, lack of prayer and Bible reading, marriage and parenting failures - the allure of arrogance greases the wheels of these to set backsliding in motion. As demons, we must make every effort to convince our patients that they do not need the Enemy; indeed, to be angry at the Enemy for permitting this virus to spread and to rear their proud selves up above fellow believers. As we well know, the Enemy's modus operandi is to inspire humility in his followers. We must inspire greed, selfishness and hubris! If this is within our power, then just like our dear Eve, our patients will be ruined, and the war will be won.
As you well know, my dears, Our Father Below has for many years been in a state of paranoia and rage, believing that somehow the man Jesus' defeat on the cross has caused him harm of some kind. He is sometimes tempted to believe the prophecy made after the Happy Event that spoke of his destruction. Indubitably, events over recent millenia have perhaps demonstrated a modicum of what they call "truth" in that. I can scarce believe we may finally be making inroads into the sovereignty of the Enemy, but we must trust that it is finally possible to usurp his powerful will. The Church must be our primary target.
